How many eggs does a chicken lay? Depends on how well you feed the chickens and how well you care for them. In an intensive egg layer cage the hens should not produce less than 5 eggs per week per hen – and this can go up to an egg a day and sometimes higher. Free range egg farming, whilst requiring more work, can give better production rates. Does a hen lay her whole life? – yes , but the amount of eggs per day drops as the hen gets older. The quality of the egg also decreases. Point of lay chickens also have lower egg production when they are first placed. The eggs are also smaller when the hen is young. At about 30 weeks old the chickens should be up to a good lay rate. The quality of your layer poultry house can also affect egg production – if the chicken house is too hot or too cold, or to draughty your egg production will drop.
Lighting in a layer house
One of the best ways to increase the production of eggs in a layer house, and in fact increase the weight of broiler chickens, is using lights. Many South African farmers do not realize the value of poultry lights – used correctly they can increase egg production and broiler weights. The reverse is true – less lights will stop broilers from growing too fast – which can cause problems of it’s own. The lights are nothing fancy, low energy lights or strip fluorescents lights will do the job. The best is to put them on a timer – a few hours of extra light in your chicken house everyday will help dramatically. Different types of chicken houses will need different lighting solutions – but all very simple. This is not referring to infrared lights – which are used only for baby chicks and keeping them warm – plain white lights with no heat are required. Some farms around the world have experimented with different colours – and boy are the results plain to see. The experiments revolve around blue lights, red light and green lights – each of these colors affects the chickens differently. So to increase your egg production experiment with lights and you will see how many eggs a chicken really can lay.
